KARACHI: The wait is over for doctors who want to pursue a career in emergency medicine, as Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC) is now the only accredited public sector hospital for emergency medicine.
The hospital will now provide FCPS training in emergency medicine, approved by the College of Physicians and Surgeons Pakistan (CPSP), making it the first public sector institution where training of doctors in the specialty will be available.

The training will be supervised and registered by the CPSP, the only postgraduate medical institution in Pakistan. The induction of the next batch of students will be in January, 2018, after which the doctors will be trained for four years as a part of FCPS -II training at the casualty and emergency ward of JPMC and the emergency wards of its sister institutes – the National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases and National Institute of Child Health.
Considering it a landmark achievement, JPMC Executive Director Dr Seemin Jamali told The Express Tribune that JPMC will train doctors who want to pursue careers in emergency medicine, which is an essential component of healthcare and trauma-related casualties.

According to her, the discipline of emergency medicine was started a long time ago in foreign countries and the four-year training programme at JPMC would provide specialists that can deal with critical patients in casualty wards throughout the country.
JPMC is one of the largest teaching hospitals in the public sector that caters to the needs of the ever-expanding metropolis of Karachi and its adjoining areas. Its emergency department deals with a multitude of medical and surgical emergencies and handles an average of 1,500 patients every day, said Dr Jamali.

The emergency department has evolved over the decades under its long associated head Dr Jamali, who told The Express Tribune, “I wanted to initiate training in emergency medicine all my life and now, with this achievement, the emergency ward will be truly complete.”